1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a shoe, sandal or other footwear having a slidable drawer on a heel portion thereof, and more particularly to a shoe having a slidable drawer which is attached elastically to the inside of the heel portion of the shoe.
2. Description of the Related Art
Persons who engage in physical or athletic activities either indoors or outdoors often carry keys, coins, cards and other small items. During such activities, these items can easily fall out and become lost if the persons keep them in the pockets of their shirts or pants. Even if the pockets are equipped with zippers to keep the items from falling out, it may be uncomfortable to keep the items in those pockets. This can make it needlessly difficult for the persons to keep track of the items.
One solution to this problem is to keep such items in shoes instead. In recent years, shoes have been developed which contain storage compartments for holding small objects. Such a shoe is disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,921,008, issued on Jul. 13, 1999, to Ruff, which is incorporated herein by reference. As disclosed therein, an athletic shoe includes a storage compartment in the heel of the shoe for slidably receiving a drawer, which is secured to the shoe using a strap and a hook-and-loop fastener. The drawer is opened by unfastening the strap and pulling out the drawer using a handle portion attached to the drawer.
However, the shoe disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,921,008 has several disadvantages. The hook-and-loop fastener is not always able to withstand the impact to the shoe when the wearer engages in activities such as running, jumping or playing kick ball, for example. As a result, the strap holding in the drawer can become detached during these activities, thereby causing the drawer to fall out of the shoe and any items in the drawer to become lost. Also, it is inconvenient for the wearer of the shoe to have to unfasten the strap, pull out the drawer, re-insert the drawer and re-fasten the strap each time the wearer desires to store items in the drawer. Finally, it may not be esthetically pleasing to the wearer to have a strap attached across the entire heel portion of the shoe.